Posted by Dr. James Canton on November 24, 2009 under Uncategorized | 
Over 50% of the planet lives in MegCities today. We are forecasting over 65% by 2025. Part of the mobile migration is about jobs. 1,000 years ago it was security, safety even culture. We will need to get much better at feeding and providing basic services for the next 200 megaCities that will emerge. From energy to health care, the next M
egaCities, that is 10 million or more people will need care and nurturing well beyond the planetary logistics we know of today.
At the Institute for Global Futures we have been working with corporations and governments to better understand the needs of the future and how tomorrow’s MegaCities will demand an entirely new narrative about culture, business, communications and interaction.
Posted by Dr. James Canton on under Uncategorized |
So for those that have not heard about Singularity University, http://singularityu.org/sponsored by NASA and Google it is a university by futurists, inspired by Ray Kurzweil futurist, author and Peter Diamandes the X Prize founder.
Out of these concerns, and grounded in the belief that advanced tech innovations might save the planet and our way of life, Singularity University was born. A place to educate and share big ideas about how to develop human and tech potential to meet the challenges of the future.
The objective of the school is to actually blow up schools, at least the model of education. The big idea is to prepare the next generation of leaders to deal with exponential tech and innovations that could transform the planet for the better.
As lead chair for Futures and Forecasting track, I am concerned that we are not preparing leaders fast enough and deep enough to meet the grand challenges that confront humanity now and in the future. Grand challenges like accelerating climate change, the next 500 megacities, feeding 9 billion people, peace and security for the future planetary needs of our children. We need a new type of leadership model that is ready for the future.
Check it out. We just graduated the first executive group and the first university student group this past summer.
Singularity U is an experiment in transforming not just education but in thinking and doing for creating a better world.
What is next for nano, bio, neuro, quantum and IT? Come and find out, many lectures are online. We are building a community, join.
Check out the Synthetic Biology talk on the front page at www.Singularityu.org
Posted by Dr. James Canton on under Uncategorized |
Just got back from India. Crazy mashup of nextgen innovation and spiritual capitalism. Drove the new Nano from Tata Motors, revolutionary. Why? For about $2,000 US it enables millions to get a car and will transform the logistics and transformation of the developing world.
Also, spent some time at CRL, a supercomputer putting out 200 pentabytes of thinking, glowing, aware power. In the CPU room was a image in honor of Genesh, the Hindu Elephant God, very auspicious, good vibes, such a fantastic fusion of spirit and computing, the AI inside or out. Ghost in the machine or human in the machine?
Posted by Dr. James Canton on May 10, 2009 under Uncategorized |
A new film project, The Surrogates movie, is Terminator meets Blade Runner demonstrates the rapid acceleration of technology and its impact on society—in radical new ways. Its is based on a graphic novel of the same name. It is a bold even dark future that could happen. As with every technology there are good, bad and ugly scenarios that share an equal possibility of emerging as reality. This film captures this chaos.
We just finished on Friday the prequel to Surrogates. This is the yet to be released film starring Bruce Willis and directed and produced by the Terminator movie team. The film is about a future time when everyone has a surrogate, a robot avatar of sorts, that operates in society. The prequel is the mini film documentary about how robots will change human society, in dangerous ways. More complicated then robo cleaners, in this future, humans experience life via being connected to Sim Chairs that wirelessly connect with their Surrogates, their robo-selves.
In this future, robo-surrogates take risks, engage in adventures and operate in society often because their human owners don’t go out. Surrogates offer a parallel society of interactive robots and humans who experience their robots every sensation. There is a murder, the first in 15 years of a surrogate and their human. Willis is assigned the investigation to unravel the murder.
What the prequel, a short film I am being interviewed for, explores the future of robots and society. What kind of a dangerous Extreme Future, world are we creating where both robots and humans will interact in intimate and collaborative ways that may fundamentally change the nature of human culture. In the film, as today, we are not ready for accelerating innovations–from synthetic biology to AI–that creeping into every aspect of our world. Yes we move forward towards a number of Singularities–computing, nanotech, biotech, neurotech, quantum.
In a world where everything is connected, aware, interacting and even alive, new synthetic life forms, systems and smart processes are emerging, even here, few are watching. Some are not human. There may be other non-human agendas emerging that are directing the evolution of planetary culture, parallel to human evolution. Are you watching?
My last book, the Extreme Future explored some of this landscape, read it for more future forecasts. Look for Bruce Willis’s new movie, the Surrogates in Nov. 2009.
Posted by Dr. James Canton on under Uncategorized |
The Ghost Hack that is now embedded in about 100 million computers, perpetrated by an rogue Asian secret organization is waiting for instructions. It is an experiment in how powerful hackers can comprise our IT infrastructure. Just an experiment in staging a penetration on a scale we cannot properly even measure. Showcase for future intrusions?
Now take the Swine Flu. There are few life forms on the planet that are older or more agile then a virus. They make perfect platforms for carrying engineered pathogens or bio-agents. Given this relative benign nature of the current Swine flu, we cannot forget that the global pandemic speed that this flu traveled, covering in less then two weeks 40 countries should be noted.
The connection between two random but global agents, to reach the penetration, from a systems acceleration perspective is not random. In a larger context, both of these events, one seemingly random, the Swin flu and the other a purposeful malicious hack, have the same global system dynamics–fast trajectory of penetration, borderless mobility, digital and human infection, infection velocity and transglobal impact.
At the Institute for Global futures, we track these seemingly wild card events to establish patterns of connection so we are able to make forecasts, trends and provide advice to our clients. This is an example of a speculative but plausible scenario we are watching.
Posted by Dr. James Canton on April 1, 2009 under Uncategorized |
This article comes from MIT’s Tech Review and is startling in its implications for what is next in not just computing, but in driving the Singularity Forecast. Will we witness an era where AI rivals human intelligence or even surpasses it?
Perhaps a different form of AI, different form of consciousness from human beings, a synthetic form of intelligence I would maintain, has already emerged.
I wrote about this in my article When the Network Wakes Up. In it, I posed the notion that perhaps the Singularity has already started and we did not notice because we are so human-centric in looking for consciousness and intelligence that is biological, or computational in form, when there is a new A-Life model that is emerging, a mash-up of silicon and biology. Read on.
Artificial intelligence investigators have built a fully silicon scale simulation of the human brain. The artificial neurons operate faster than the organic model, are built to learn and adapt.
The Fast Analog Computing with Emergent Transient States project takes a different approach to other electronic intellect endeavors. Research like the Blue Brain project, run vast software simulations of virtual brains, which allows them to tinker with the conditions and wiring of the brain with the tap of a keyboard. On the downside, you’re running a layer of simulation of a parallel system on top of an utterly sequential computer system, which slows things down.
The FACETS hardware instead builds direct silicon similes of synapses and neural circuits, creating a real hardware brain which can operate in parallel just like the human mind. Sure, it’s more of an American Idol mind at the moment, with only two hundred thousand neurons compared to a hundred billion in your head (a factor of five hundred thousand).
But the FACETS architecture is scalable, and the team already has plans for a billion-synapse super chip – for those of you updating your “end of the human race” calendars, that’s a fifty-thousand-fold increase in one generation. And we all know that computers don’t have new generations more than once or twice a year.
FACETS Artificial Brain
Posted by Dr. James Canton on under Uncategorized |
The use of geospatial information is transforming every industry, from health care to climate change. For an example, check out the Tornado Map. This map shows the spatial distribution of 43,433 tornadoes in the United States recorded between 1950 and 1995.
Posted by Dr. James Canton on under Uncategorized |
Dr. James Canton’s Response to the White Paper for the National Human Genome Research Institute
From the National Human Genome Research Institute
Developments in DNA sequencing technologies over the past two decades have been a critically important driver of breath-taking advances in our understanding of broad areas of biology and biomedicine, ranging from human disease to microbial ecology, to evolution. During this time, and especially in the past few years, sequencing costs have decreased faster than Moore’s Law and sequencing capacity has increased at an ever-greater pace.
These advances have enabled the landmark accomplishments of genomics – the determination of the genome sequences of the major model organisms used in biomedical research (bacteria, yeast, roundworms, fruit flies and mice) and, ultimately, that of humans.
Building on those fundamental data sets, DNA sequencing has been applied on a large scale to learn more about human variation (e.g., HapMap and 1000 Genomes), the functional composition of genomes (e.g., ENCODE and modENCODE), and the genetic basis of many human diseases and other traits.
In the past few years, a new generation of DNA sequencing platforms based on fundamentally different methodologies has collectively become a ‘disruptive technology’ that will create a new set of research opportunities for the coming decade. The availability of these so-called ‘next-gen’ sequencing technologies (and the already emerging ‘third-generation’ technologies that will closely follow) raises many questions for the research community. NHGRI has identified a number of questions that are pertinent to the future of DNA sequencing and of genomics.
Dr. James Canton’s Response
These are the right questions regarding the future of genome sequencing. There are a number of key convergence drivers impacting genomic sequencing also to consider, such as the future of personalized medicine, consumer genomic informatics, nano-biology and synthetic biology, all should be factored in as well to this strategic planning process.
How and why we collect, manage and mine the data from sequencing is the real value of this effort. We need to explore new ways to leverage off of social networking and research collaborations that will encourage process innovations from beyond the large institutions; we need to inspire a highly innovative era of Sequencing 2.0.
We should consider what the future of the Post-Genomic Society looks like on the other side of the next ten years and then work backwards to consider strategic planning, funding and policy to shape a desired future. If not, we run the risk of genomic developments happening faster then we can anticipate, plan for and control. Too much control in the hands of the large institutions will be no worse then no control over a highly distributed open source model. We need the right balance of players–large and small, all focused on the same objectives.
There will be radical outcomes of an inexpensive, highly pervasive, distributed, genomic sequencing, information infrastructure that will and should, transform health care, medicine and influence human evolution. This impact will be beyond the disruptive innovations we see today, such as the development of a personal predictive health forecast. Society, medicine and policy makers in government are not ready for this extreme future that is coming fast.
Consumers will want to know their Predictive Health Future Outcome. The policy implications of this social, economic and scientific impact will be comprehensive–sequencing is just the first stage of this transformation in either consumer empowerment, or confusion.
The future impact of high scale inexpensive sequencing will likely create a new consumer awareness of the value of personal genomics. How long will I live? What diseases may I be at risk for? What can I do?
Also, the practice of medicine and health care delivery should change to be responsive to this innovation–from early genomic detection to wide distributed data-rich, real-time sequencing. Policies and funding to create new medical education and treatment models that will change the paradigm of health care should be researched now. Sequencing opens transparency, but an imperfect future of predictive and preventive health care in the short term. Managing expectations will be important from a policy perspective.
Future scenarios may be problematic and defeat consumer expectations if the control of genomic info via sequencing is not distributed and controlled with a scientifically sound and rationale plan, given this information today. It is likely that the link between genomic personal data and medicine, i.e. how disease can be prevented or disease treated, will continue to lag our capacity to turn genomic data into treatment.
At the same time, we should expect dramatic and consistent breakthroughs if we make available via a social networking model, access online to a larger collaborative community to pool data, share insights, create tools and conduct the large-scale knowledge management of the outcomes of sequencing the larger population.
The real value of sequencing to address human health issues from forming a National Genomic Sequencing Data Infrastructure project (beyond current efforts Hap Map etc.) to warehouse, mine and conduct research linking drug discovery, prevention, diet to individual health outcomes, is to actually prevent disease and promote health with personalized information. This should be pursued as the ultimate end game. This would be accelerated if a private and public partnership were to incentivize academics, research centers and private sector companies to collaborate beyond the efforts currently available.
Sequencing projects might focus on: Smaller scale projects to offer innovation grants to research the links to develop lifestyle, genomic and cardiovascular disease, early detection links with specific Cancer populations, evidence based medicine with nutra-genomics.
Funding agencies should encourage sequencing innovations towards enhancing human health, more innovative research into drug discovery and genomics, and the creation of centralized collection, and distribution of genomic data with the objective to better understand the much needed transformation of medicine and health care that must be addressed, if we are to enable healthy consumers.
In an era of the aging baby boomers, depopulation, reduced GDP, a multi-trillion dollar health care system, funding agencies must be on the vanguard to drive innovation, collaboration and discovery to direct the future of sequencing to become a viable cost-effective strategy for enhancing the health of Americans.
Posted by Dr. James Canton on February 22, 2009 under Uncategorized |
As a young doctoral student decades ago, one of my thesis projects was to analyze a revolutionary new technology for traveling in the deep ocean. The person who was head of the company was Sylvia Earle. He ideas, then and now, have revolutionized our thinking about the connection between life support systems, humans and biodiversity.
Sylvia Earle, the foremost ocean scientist and advocate for biodiversity has just won the TED prize. She has been a staunch advocate for waking us all up to the threats to biodiversity, threats to the future of humanity. Her key point, if we do not protect the oceans, to protect the living sea, to make the sea sustainable for our children, then the game is over.
The unknown impact of killing the oceans and this impact on human health and the future—the destruction of mankind’s life support system–are known. This potential disaster in the making can be stopped. It is in our interest to protect the living sea. The climate, food chain and public health are at risk. We have 50 years before game over. Even if you disagree with the climate change data, no one can disagree with the hard evidence that we are killing the oceans. And we can change this now.
Syliva Earle’s acceptance speech is moving. Enjoy.
Posted by Dr. James Canton on February 13, 2009 under Uncategorized |
Clearly the global economy is in free fall and despite what actions any government takes, we need a financial liposuction to trim the fat, so to say. The fat in this case is the funny money deals, lack of any regulation, voodoo economic theory and enough stupidity to go around, from consumers to Wall Street. It is time for adult supervision.
My position on this is that the global financial crisis will last best case 2-3 years, worse case 3-5, and I think that is unlikely, as the global economy, led by the US and EU, is fundamentally sound. GDP is stable and even growth will return. I think there is a confidence issue that is fueled by the sky-is-falling-media and many people will be hurt. But a recovery is in the cards and soon.
While we are reassessing our lifestyle, consumerism, retirement and work in general, a return to basics is in order. Do we really need all the stuff in our lives? Do we really need the consumption on steroids that has got us here? Is “greed is good” the only moral standard?
I forecast that the trend toward sustainability, a new Conservation Economic model will emerge. More simplicity, sustainable consumption, reasonable choices, evaluation of lifestyles are all in order. Conserving money, resources and living a bit more aware of the future will be a part of this new awareness.
